On PHPMaster.com today there's a new article from Alejandro Gervasio introducing you to the concept of "services", a layer put on top of your models to make a common API that's easier to reuse.

Don’t let the definition freak you out, as if you’ve been using MVC for a while the chances are you’ve used a service already. Controllers are often called services, as they carry out application logic and additionally are capable of interfacing to several client layers, namely views. Of course in a more demanding environment, plain controllers fail short in handling several clients without the aforementioned duplicating, so that’s why the construction of a standalone layer is more suitable in such cases.

He explains the process behind creating a simple domain model (image here) and shows how the Service layer wraps it up into a simpler interface, leaving the model to handle the business logic. He uses the example of an "EncoderInterface" that's implemented in a "JsonEncoder" and "Serializer" to both provide a "setData" method.